With Sino-South Korea ties plummeting over a push to host an anti-missile system, there has been a sharp increase in crackdowns targeting the activities of South Korean missionaries in the region.

Many South Korean nationals who have been expelled were in close contact with North Korean refugees, placing defectors repatriated to North Korea at maximum risk.

An alarming number of refugees -- who are entitled to international protection under the UN Refugee Convention, its 1967 Protocol and the UN Convention Against Torture -- have already been sent back to face inhuman brutality and possibly execution because of exposed associations with prohibited groups.

Chosun Ilbo reported Friday that while China’s profoundly cruel refoulement policy has “eased considerably since 2014, when Seoul-Beijing relations were at their peak,” China’s stance “has turned hard-line again,” since South Korea permitted the deployment of the controversial missile defense system.

The newspaper reported that six North Korean women led out of the country by two Chinese people smugglers may now be forcibly sent back to face abuse. There are many additional cases of imperiled North Korean refugees facing repatriation.

In February, a huge number of North Koreans were reported to be sent back. They were found to be in contact with South Korean missionaries and therefore may be in the gravest danger of all.

Agence France-Presse reported that between Jan. 10 and Feb. 10 alone, 40 North Korean refugees were forcibly returned subsequent to raids aimed at South Korean missionaries. They could be killed because of the uncovered connection.

Paragraph 1103 of a 2013 UN Commission of Inquiry report states: “officials of the State Security Department employ severe beatings, deliberate starvation and other means of torture against repatriated persons in order to identify those who have had contact with Christian churches and South Korean nationals while abroad. Repatriated persons regularly die in detention as a result of beatings and starvation.”

As reported by The Korea Herald on Thursday, Hong Hyun-ik, a senior analyst at the Sejong Institute, recommends suspending the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system on the Korean Peninsula until Chinese retaliation subsides, saying, “THAAD is more about protecting the US and Japan than South Korea, because Seoul and its surrounding region, where half of the country’s entire population reside, are vulnerable to North Korea’s incoming missiles.”

On Saturday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson named Japan as America’s “most important ally” while calling South Korea a “partner relative to stability,” in essence reiterating what Trump has been conveying for some time.

The obvious inference: South Korea’s vital security requirements are being subordinated to not only those of America but also Japan, despite the unmistakable fact that South Korea would suffer the greatest losses by far in the event of a war with the North.

The controversy encircling THAAD has rendered the South unambiguously less secure.

Concurrently, the North Korean refugee emergency in China cries out for resolution.

Since the 1990s famine, hundreds of thousands have braved enormous perils to escape the North -- many have also died trying. All are refugees entitled to protection under international law, because leaving the North is criminalized and ferociously punished by the Kim regime.

Paragraph 1104 of the 2013 UN report affirms, “Border guards remain authorized to kill persons who cross the North Korean border without permission. Such killings amount to murder.”

I relay the following testimony at a dear friend’s request. Lee (an alias) is now almost 50 and was born in North Hamgyong Province in North Korea. Abandoned while still very young, she became a homeless orphan and was forced to beg for food, nearly dying of starvation.

She barely survived the famine through the compassion of an elderly woman, not a relative, whom she refers to in Korean as a “benevolent grandmother.” Lee reminds there are kind and good people in the North, such as this resourceful and merciful woman.

Rape was a commonplace occurrence, with certain members of the military and North Korean authorities assaulting young women at will, with impunity. She witnessed public executions and suffered rape herself.

Lee saw numerous dead bodies -- children and people of all ages who had starved to death. International food aid does not reach those who need it most but is diverted to the military, she fiercely contends -- as do many other defectors -- and for this reason she once told me, “What the North Korean people need is not food aid, but weapons” to defend against arbitrary arrest and abuses.

Former North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho declared in an interview Thursday, “Right now in North Korea, there is a mass resistance movement that is unseen.”

Hence, callous war rhetoric threatening to “wipe North Korea off the map” is thoroughly uncalled for. Studies reveal the majority of North Koreans oppose the Kim dynasty and yearn for unification under South Korea -- indiscriminate killings or the bombing of civilians should never even be alluded to let alone considered.

The late Hwang Jang-yop, the highest ranking North Korean official to defect, bore witness that millions of Koreans died between 1995 and 1997.

He wrote in “The Problems of Human Rights in North Korea,” published in 2002, “I and my colleagues have not only lived in North Korea but also served in the top brain center of the nation, and therefore have the most accurate statistics on the famine in North Korea.

“The statistics we have are not based on hearsay but on data reported to Kim Jong-il himself, and were given to us by an official of the Organization Guidance Bureau of the Party’s Central Committee ... more than 500,000 people, including 50,000 party members, had starved to death in 1995.

"And as of mid-November 1996, almost 1 million people had already starved to death. ... If the situation did not change, the official predicted that about 2 million people would starve to death in 1997. An official of the Organization Guidance Bureau would never have made irresponsible reports to the secretaries of the Central Party."

Lee defected in 2000, but was soon trafficked. For the next eight years, she endured inconceivable suffering and hellish conditions in China.

Tens of thousands of female North Korean defectors have become victims of human trafficking in China. Seoul’s intervention for the sake of these innocents, who are citizens pursuant to the South Korean Constitution, is necessary and urgent.

Lee was viciously beaten and again raped. Even basic needs such as clean water or freely accessing a bathroom were denied her during those years. Circumstances were so unbearable she attempted suicide in 2003 but thankfully survived. She eventually managed, through a fortuitous turn of events, to save money cleaning houses and pay off her “owner,” purchasing her way out of her hell. Most are not so fortunate.

She personally encountered countless North Korean women and even children who were trafficked in China, including girls as young as 12 who had been sold into sexual slavery or “forced marriage” and “forced concubinage” as designated by a UN report.

South Korean leaders must urgently interfere with China, prioritizing redressing the refugee crisis.

Previous small-scale diplomatic interventions, when Sino-South Korea relations were convalescent, literally saved the lives of a number of refugees. These individuals are all entitled to protection under South Korea’s Constitution as well as numerous international laws. Turning a blind eye to such staggering agony and injustice is unconscionable.

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By Robert Park

Robert Park is a founding member of the nonpartisan Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, minister, musician and former prisoner of conscience. -- Ed.